of the world would not be cleaned by the dialogue, but the big fact
remains that the documents concerning Colonel Hammond’s dynamite went
into Russian hands--a fire-brand for her to ignite Afghanistan, the
Indian Border, and British mutinies.
“Then I went back into the field to watch. Weeks passed,” he continued
hastily. “We met in Bhurpal, and you told me what you had discovered. I
knew. Each day was a brimming beaker of joy to me then. I saw British
India shudder at the broken vessel of her secrets.
“Routledge, it was as if you struck a viper in the spine. British India
curled up. I had struck her in the spine. She writhed and curled up!”
Cardinegh laughed again. “Ireland will be rid of British garrisons.
They will travel oversea to fight the Afghans and the Russians now.
The red-necks at Sarjilid won’t have to travel so far! There’ll be a
fifty-mile battle-front, as you said--you ‘amateur prophet’! You and
the other boys will campaign--but old Jerry won’t be there. I’ve had my
day--and this is another one. I’m off to lift your load, my son.”
The veteran campaigner arose and donned his coat. Routledge was pacing
up and down the room. Cardinegh reached the door, and, holding to the
knob, spoke again:
“I know what you think, my son. You think that my plan miscarried.
You think that England spoiled my work--that her treaty with Japan
was my answer. You think that England will rub away the rest of the
insulation between Russia and Japan, and that the Bear will fuse into
the Rising-Sun--that all this will pull Russia up from the border of
British India. Ah! ... and you think well. I can’t see it all as clear
as I did once. I can’t feel the thought of failure as I did once.
England has time to strengthen her borders and cover her nakedness if
Russia and Japan fight--but the story of Shubar Khan is told and my
work done! It’s the initial lesion, Routledge, and the veins of British
India are running with the toxin of a disease--sometimes amenable
to heroic treatment--like the Anglo-Japanese Alliance--but always
incurable!”
SEVENTH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE BEGS FOR A STIMULANT--THE STUFF THAT SINGS IN THE VEINS OF
KINGS
Rain upon the windows. The atmosphere was heavy in the lodging, heavy
from a sleepless night. Tobacco ash upon the floor; white embers in the
grate; the finer ash of burned emotions in the eyes of the men. Neither
had spoken for several moments.... Whose was to be the desolation of
war? Was North China or China South soon to rumble with the tramp of
foreign armies? Routledge put the question away among the far concerns
of his mind. It was a moment now to mourn the man before him. There
never had been an instant of hate for Jerry Cardinegh--perhaps, a full
sweep of horror, at first, but that was gone, and in its wake was a
pity of permanence.
He mourned his friend who was mad, dead. The years had wrought a
ghastly trick here. Under many constellations, he had heard Cardinegh
whisper his passionate hatred for England and her relation to Ireland
and to India. Not a little of it Routledge himself shared. He perceived
now that this passion had devoured the reason and sweetness of the old
man’s mind. The Cardinegh of old days looked no longer out of these
hunted, red-lit eyes. A pestilence had deranged the well-loved face.
It was evil now in the fire-light--like a tampered chart. A life of
brooding had vanquished the excellent humor at the last. Oppression had
nursed a demon to obsess the brain and make a shudder of a good name.
“I must go,” Cardinegh said roughly. “It is my last day. This morning
my final arrangements for Noreen. An hour with her--then to the
war-office with the revelation. You’ll stay here, son. Stick to these
walls--until Dartmore and the boys bring your glory back to you.... I
can see them trooping in!... And Noreen--ah, the gladness of her!”
Routledge opened wide the windows and stood by while the morning swept
in, damp, chill, but cleansing.
“Sit down a moment more, Jerry,” he said finally. “I want to ask a
favor of you. It is a hard thing, a delicate thing--harder and more
delicate than the thing you trusted to me, without asking. There is no
other white man whom I would dare ask such a favor.”
“Out with it, son.” Cardinegh watched him wonderingly. Routledge sat
down and leaned forward, a fine light in his big, calm eyes.
“I told you I had passed an interesting night, Jerry. It was more than
that--a wonderful night. Thoughts have come to me that never squirmed
in mortal brain before. I felt this vast moil of London--my enemy!
I felt it gathering about my ears like the _Tai Fung_ in the China
sea. It was rich, incomparably rich, the stimulus of a Cæsar--this
Herod-hate of seven million souls! I’ve been thinking for hours,
Jerry--and I should have been writing--stuff for glory--the great book!
Whiskey wouldn’t bring out such work, nor drugs, nor Yogi asceticism. I
have glimpsed such work in stars, in battle-smoke, in bivouac fires, in
the calm and distances of the monster Himalayas; perhaps in the eyes of
women--but glimpses only, Jerry! To-night it came like a steady stream
of empyrean fire. I want months of it--months! I would pay half my life
to have London and the army hating me this way until the work is done.
It’s the stuff that sings in the veins of kings. Give it to me--for the
book!”
“Wake up! You fool--wake up!”
“Listen, old champion,” Routledge went on passionately: “I have spent
this life gathering the data of experience. I have crossed the Sahara
in the hue and garb of a camel driver; I have lain months a yellow
Mohammedan in the huts of Lahore; as a Sannyasi, I have trudged up
to the roof of the world. And the fighting, Jerry--Pathan, Zulu,
and Burmese; and the revolts--Afghan, Balkan, Manipur, African,
Philippine--all these came back, vivid, splendid last night--pictures
fit to gild and garnish the Romance of the Open. And, Jerry, I have
peered into the mystic lore of India, the World’s Mother--subtly and
enticingly to color it all! I want to do this, Jerry, the Book of our
Tribe! I shall write it in blood, with pillars of fire leaping up
for chapter-heads--if you will only leave this flood of power in my
veins--the Hate of London!”
Cardinegh, gasping, clutched his hand. “One of us--you or I--is mad----”
“Mad, of course,” laughed Routledge. “A man must be a little mad with
the inspiration of Keats and the punch of Carlyle banging together in
his brain.”
Hope lived wildly now in Cardinegh’s eyes. “And while you are doing the
book,” he muttered, “I am to live out your tinsel and truffles here,
play the grizzled warrior--led about by the child of her mother....
Routledge--Routledge, your brand of stimulus is new and raw.”
“I’m tolerated to ordinary poisons, Jerry. A man immersed in gentle
azure can’t get the other pigments out of his brain.”
Cardinegh arose. “It’s sweet heaven to me,” he murmured strangely, with
quivering lips. “It is a rest such as I have never known. I never was
ready to rest until now, until to-day--when I thought the chance was
burned away. You want to take this?”
“Yes.”
“Months of life--Home, Noreen!... Damme, Routledge--I’m broken! It’s
like you, Routledge--it’s like you----”
“To me it’s a gift of the gods! Hold on, Jerry, until I bring back the
Book--hold on and sit tight!”
Cardinegh left the lodging and Bookstalls, bewildered by his new
possession of days. The strain that had kept him afoot until the end;
that had stiffened his body and faculties for the end itself; carrying
him step by step from the Khyber Hills, through the Bhurpal campaign
(the days in which he had watched the results of the fire he had
started); the strain that had roused his personal craft to baffle and
disarm those men of uncanny keenness at Naples, and pulled him up for a
last rally in London--was lifted now, and with it relaxed the substance
of his brain and body. Doubtless, he would have preserved his acumen
upstanding, and an unsnapped nerve, to bid Noreen farewell and make his
confession at the War-Office to-day--but there was no need!
The old man walked along mumbling, forgetting the while to hail a cab.
The miracle of it all, though it did not appeal to him, was that he
had lost his ruling, destroying hatred for England. Cheer Street and
Noreen--the blessedness of her hand to help him; her touch so like her
mother’s upon his brow; the eyes of her mother across the table--months
of life, of rest, of Home and Noreen!... These were his thoughts. There
was no room for world-politics, for war, for passion. Even the thing
which Routledge had done hovered in the background. It was a piece of
inhuman valor, almost too big to hold fast to. Routledge was identified
in his brain now with the stirring braveries of days long gone; with
other sunlights in which men met the shock of things in full manhood;
it was of another, of a ruddier, world to old Jerry’s eyes to-day....
In a remote way, he felt that once _he_ might have revelled in the hate
of London. Perhaps it was one of the things peculiar to the middle
distances of manhood--as far from the comprehension of the elders as of
the children. That there was an element of sacrifice in the action of
Routledge was not entirely lost to Cardinegh, but he put it away among
the misty glories of memory--days when manhood was in its zenith of
light and power. It was not of the present; it had nothing to do with
the numbness and the swift, painless softening of to-day.
“Noreen!” he called, at the front door in Cheer Street.
A servant told him that Noreen had been away for an hour.... With a
startled look, the servant drew a chair close to the fire for the
old man, poured a grog for him, set his smoking things to hand, and
backed staring out of the room.... Hours afterward, Noreen found him
there--the glass, the pipes, the daily papers untouched. His smile was
like something which the wind had blown awry. His eyes were depleted of
fire, of fury. Even the starry worship which her presence had reflected
in them yesterday was dimmed--as were the mighty images of the wars
in his brain.... He roused at the sight of her, started to speak of
Routledge, halted, reflected, then drank.
“Hold a match to my pipe, child. It was your mother’s way. You’ve been
gone the long while, deere.”
She obeyed. The majesty of pain was upon her face as she hurried
away. Locked in her own room, long afterward, she heard him humming
quaveringly an old Irish folk-song--lost from her brain a dozen years.
EIGHTH CHAPTER
THE SUPERLATIVE WOMAN EMPTIES HER HEART OF ITS TREASURES FOR THE
OUTCAST, AND THEY PART AT CHARING CROSS
After taking the hand of Jerry Cardinegh at the stairs, Routledge
returned to his room, smiling a trifle bitterly.
“That was certainly a fragile underpinning to rear a great lie upon,”
he mused. “I couldn’t have made old Jerry swallow that a year ago....
But there’s good humor in the idea--the book of Routledge energized by
the dynamos of British hate--a book of wars from a man who rather likes
to promote the ranking rottenness of war.... But the name of Cardinegh
cannot go down just yet with that of Colonel Hammond, and the Lotus
Expedition; with treachery.... Living God, how that sweet girl haunts
me!... I must put her away--far back among the cold, closed things. It
isn’t fair to use her as a trellis for thought-vines like mine. She is
just psychic enough to know, without words----”
He thought presently of what Rawder had told him about returning to
India this year; also of Noreen’s amendment--that he was to go very
quickly. How far off it had seemed yesterday!... Routledge was standing
at the window. Though his active mind was filled with sadder, finer
matters, a process of unconscious cerebration was alert for the White
Mustache in the street below. This certain secret agent was not in
sight, but there was not a single individual of the throng who _might
not_ be identified with that silent, fameless department--the men
who had kept the secret of Shubar Khan in spite of Colonel Hammond’s
regiment, which knew all.... London was running with its sordid morning
business--grinding by in the gray morn and the rain.
“London,” he exclaimed softly, marvelling at the great thing which had
befallen him, “the keyboard of the planet! How the Excellent Operator
hungers to turn the full voltage on me now!”
Routledge was hard-hit, and made no pretenses to himself otherwise.
He did not want to go back to India to-day. The thing he had managed
to pray for--the Hate of London--was a crippling horror. It tore down
the inner life of him. He felt already the encompassing loneliness of
an expatriate; worse, he felt against him the gigantic massed soul of
the English. It peopled the shadows of the room and the street and
his brain, filling him with weakness and faltering. It was not that
the idea of death hung to the flanks of his being. He could laugh at
death with a sterling principle. Rather, it was that all that had bound
him to life was dead--work and play and light. He was chained to a
corpse--the hate of London. It was an infectious corrosion which broke
his own spirit, as no physical dread had ever done; yet, stricken as
he was, he felt himself torn in the counter-attraction of two great
passions--between his sweetest woman and his bravest man.... A light
rapping at his inner door startled him. It was the Bookstalls boy.
“Kin I come out now, Mister?”
With a gasp of relief, Routledge turned to the door; but, on the way,
his eyes fell upon the two worn, fallen-in shoes, set so evenly before
the fire.
“Bless you, lad--just a minute,” he said.
He gathered up all the change his pockets had held, big and little
pieces of silver, and dropped them softly into the shoes, now stiffly
dried,--then opened the door. The small, draggled chap emerged briskly,
took in his host from head to foot with a quick, approving look, then
glanced out of the window to locate himself. It was all coming back to
him apparently.
“I was sleepin’ in yer street-stairs,” he explained, as if to get it
straight in his own mind. “Then I didn’t know nothink till I ’eerd
woices.”
“What’s your name, little soul?”
“Johnny Brodie.”
“Did the voices bother you, Johnny?” Routledge asked.
“Naw. I was too warm. Nothink like woices never bothers when you’re
warm. Is them your stairs? Nobody never come up them stairs late afore.”
“Have you slept there often, Johnny?”
“Not wery,” the boy said nervously.
He had given Routledge a start for a moment. It was not past the White
Mustache to have used a lad of this size, but, once used, the lad would
never have spoken of “woices.” Besides, he had slept on the stairs
before. Johnny was looking about the walls with covert appreciation.
Guns, saddles, and soldier-pictures appealed to him. They were proper
man-things.
“How long have you been in Bookstalls, and around here?”
“Allus.”
“But haven’t you any place to sleep?”
“Lots.” It wasn’t said with humorous intent. Johnny Brodie was
struggling with his shoes.
Routledge regarded him with joy.
“Lor-gordy,” muttered Johnny, in an awed voice. “Wishermay die if you
ain’t tipped over a bank in me boots!... Mine?”
Routledge nodded.
“Well, I’m chivvied! I ’ont be safe nowheres wit all this.”
“Johnny, are all your places to sleep like my stairs? I mean, haven’t
you any regular place?”
The boy gave him a quick glance and decided that this was not the time
for lies.
“Lor-gordy--them stairs ain’t bad--on’y wen it’s wery cold. Naw, I
ain’t got nothink reg’lar.”
“There’s a bit of a room just your size, Johnny, in the back-hall,” the
man said. “I’m going away again to-day, and these rooms will be locked
up for a long time, but I’ll be back, I think. If I were to fix it with
the good landlady for you to have that little room--and I’ll give you
a regular army blanket like the soldiers have, to curl up in when it’s
cold, and a little cot, and all the things you need--would you use it
every night?”
“Lor’! Say, Mister, honest?”
He nodded. “Run along then, Johnny, and get a good breakfast, and I’ll
have it arranged when you get back.”
Routledge came to an agreement with the woman of the house; carried
from his own rooms blankets, soap, towels, pictures, a pair of military
brushes, an unused pocket-knife, a package of candles, and many
other little things to the wee box of a room in the hall, taking much
pleasure in the outfitting.... He had not yet brought his own baggage
from Charing Cross, and was glad now. London had become to him like a
plague quarantine, a smothering menace. He would leave London to-day,
and Noreen Cardinegh, without daring to see her again. His every
movement, he realized, was watched. Even to take her hand for a moment
would reflect evil upon her. The White Mustache, or one of his kind,
would observe, and a lasting record would be made. He paced the floor
swiftly, murdering the biggest thing in his life.
... He could go to Rawder. There was healing in that. Perhaps the old
Sannyasi would take him for the _chela_ of his _chela_. He could hide
in England’s India, which only a few of the secret service knew so well
as he.... Could he put all the wars and illusions of matter away, drink
of the ancient wisdom, wander beneficently until the end, with two
holy men, in the midst of God’s humblest poor? Could he put behind him
all that was supreme and lovely of his life this hour, sink it in the
graveyard of his past with other dead desires?
It was just a rush of vague, vain thoughts. Had he been pure as the
boy, twelve years ago, and wise as the man now, _and if he had never
known Noreen Cardinegh_, possibly then the old Sannyasi might say, “Be
the disciple of my disciple; and, free from all the illusions of the
flesh, journey with us up into the silence of the goodly mountains.”...
But this life would never know freedom from that thrilling, beautiful
memory. He could sacrifice a union with Noreen Cardinegh, but never
renounce her from the high place of his heart. She was wedded to the
source and centre of his life, and no asceticism could shrive her
from him. He might put half the planet’s curve between, but the bride
the world had formed for him would be the eternal crying voice in the
wilderness; and until they were mated in this or another life, the
Wheel of Births and Deaths would never whirl him free from love, the
loftiest of all illusions. Though he sat in a temple upon the roof of
the world, holding his thoughts among the stars until the _kusa grass_
beneath him was blown like dust away, and his body petrified upon the
naked rock, the last breath from the ruin would stir his lips to the
name of the world’s bright gift to him--Noreen.
Johnny Brodie returned. Routledge took him by the hand and led him into
the midst of his possessions.... It was quite a happy time, with the
old landlady looking on, and a mysterious fund in her pocket for Johnny
stockings, and Brodie trousers and even dinners, when old Bookstalls
was remiss in her duty. Finally, at the last moment, Routledge dropped
his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. The face was turned up clear, the
eyes unblinking. The man was no longer afraid.
“Johnny,” he said, “the best fellows in this world are those who are
strong enough to hold their tongues at the right time. Nobody must know
about this little room--_nobody_. To you, I’m just a decent stranger
who has gone away. If anybody asks who or where or how or why about
me--you don’t know. This is all yours. Sleep tight, and say nothing. If
you need anything that you can’t get yourself, go to the landlady. Be
clean about what you do everywhere--I don’t mean in the room, Johnny,
but everywhere, in the street, too. Not clean about your hands and
face--that’s good--but mostly about what you think. I may come back
some time, and I may not, but you’ll be fixed here as long as you need.
Think of it, Johnny Brodie--remember this well: always if something
hits you from inside that a thing isn’t good to do, don’t hurry about
doing it. Think it over. If you wouldn’t do it when the person you like
best in the world is watching, it isn’t a good thing to do alone.”
Routledge locked his lodgings. With the boy attached to one hand and
his bag in the other, he went down into the street, and just at that
moment a carriage opened at the curb, and Noreen Cardinegh stepped out.
Routledge took the outstretched hand, but there was a warm flood of
pain widening within him, as blood from an opened wound....
The rain-coat hung about her like a delicate harmony, its hood covering
her hair; and its high-rolling collar, bound with scarlet, thin as a
thread but vivid as an oriflamme, concealed her throat. That lustrous,
perfect oval face in the rain. It was luminous from within like a
pearl, and had _its_ scarlet-edging in the curving, exquisite lips,
strange with inner vividness. Never had she been so wondrous to him
as he felt the superb zest of life beneath the pearl-gray glove that
moment in grimy Bookstalls. A conception of womanhood that widened the
limitations of any man!... He lifted his glance from the pavement,
where it had been held for an instant by the glittering point of her
boot, and found the great eyes upon him--pools of splendor which held
his temple, white as truth, golden sunlight on its dome; and, far
within, a dim, mystic sanctuary where Mother Earth had built a shrine
for him.
“Thank God you have not gone, Routledge-san!” she said in a low way.
“Tell me--ah, but I know--you would have gone without a word to me....
You think it is right?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you punish me this way, Routledge-san?... Do you think I mind
what London cares or thinks? Do you think London could force me to
believe ill of you?... I must talk with you! May we not go up into your
rooms, out of the crowd and the rain? The little boy may come.”
There was not a window commanding the street which might not have held
the White Mustache that moment; not a single passer-by who might not
have been one of his kind.
“I have turned in my--that is, I have given up my room,” he faltered.
“I must talk with you. Come into my carriage. That will be the better
way. The little boy----”
She caught the look of hostility in the street-waif’s eyes. She was
taking the man away. There was another look, the meaning of which she
did not miss. Routledge bent down to him.
“Good-by, little soul,” he said. “I’ll find you in some doorway again
some time--maybe in the doorway to fame. Be a good little fellow
always. Don’t get tired of being clean, and some time you’ll be mighty
glad.”
The boy watched the carriage move slowly away among the truckage--until
a stranger put a hand upon his shoulder.
* * * * *
For many seconds neither spoke; then it was Noreen.
“What is this big thing you are doing, Routledge-san?”
“I cannot tell--even you.”
“Yes, but you need not have hurt me so. You were going away without a
word to me--and I am so proud to have been for you--against the others.”
“Noreen, you must believe that it is not good for you to be seen with
me now. Every movement I make is known; everyone in the slightest
communication with me is under suspicion. Your loyalty--I cannot even
speak of steadily, it is so big and dear--and because it is so, I
shudder to drag you into these forlorn fortunes of mine. It is in the
power of these people to make you very miserable while I am gone--and
that is anguish to me, nothing less.”
“You think of me--think of me always, and a little social matter
which concerns me!” she exclaimed. “I care nothing for it--oh, please
believe that. Last night you left the Armory, not knowing what
had befallen you. This morning you know all. Could you have done
unconsciously--anything to turn the Hate of London upon you?... It is
not in reason. I believe it is just and right for me to know what my
father told you in the night--but you will not tell me----”
“This thing is mine to carry--to carry alone. Last night I laughed.
To-day I find that it is not a thing to laugh at. The Hate of
London,”--Routledge carved out the words slowly and clearly, in spite
of the resistance of his whole humanity--“I have brought upon myself.”
“Not with dishonor!”
He was silent.
“Not with dishonor, Routledge-san!” she whispered triumphantly, peering
into his eyes. “You could not convey a falsehood to me, not even to
shield another--not even if you uttered the words of the lie. Your eyes
would tell the truth to me!”